Neal was here

Is it better to go depth-first or breadth-first when building groups of friends?

I oft find the need to write a short snippet about this gentleman John Hodgman. It is that time again. Behold his witty, random, dry communications:

Apparently, he has a new book coming out in October. I never read the first, but I did listen to the audio version. Perhaps we will get lucky and he will again release it in mp3.

Regardless, I will find myself with a need to know the content.

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Proverbs 23:17 – “Do not let your heart envy sinners, but live in the fear of the LORD always.”

The catholic Anglican church is trying to apologize for critisizing Charles Darwin and his evolutionary theory.. Still haven’t decided how I feel about that. Darwin’s descendents think it’s a futile effort to ‘make themselves [the church] feel better’ (from the article).

I applaud the church for realizing that they misunderstood the theory, and apologizing for hurting the reputation of Darwin via that error. I don’t, however, think they should apologize for disagreeing with him. Even if one side is wrong, debate and disagreement is what verifies truth.

The church, from the article, also states that the teachings of Christianity and the teachings of Darwin are not in disagreement, and I’m not 100% sure on that. A literal interpretation of Genesis is clearly in disagreement, so the questions then becomes whether Genesis should be taken that literally. That’s a debate that I cringe to enter.

amendment: it’s the anglican, not catholic. entirely different story. thanks for the clarification, phil.

apparently I need to adjust the css on my site or maybe just redesign again. soon……..

I’m currently in the middle of two different books. I had throught three, and really my fingers are placed in several more, but I’m only pursuing two with any fervor at the moment. These books are:

Out Of the Silent Planet – by CS Lewis
To date, this is one of my favorite CS Lewis and Sci-Fi books. This will be my third time through it, and I always enjoy it. It involves a standard man, Ransom, who is kidnapped and hauled to another world by two nefarious gentlemen who intend to sell him to the natives in trade for precious metal mining and colonization. The story follows Ransom as he escapes, meets the natives, and learns more about his own world through the people of Malacandra. The interesting part of this book is the way he explores the people in a world with less gravity and multiple sentient species, as well as the theological themes he conveys through a people untouched by the ‘bent’ ness. Time spent on this book: a month and counting.

Emerging Worship – by Dan Kimball
As an overview of Emerging Gatherings, Dan Kimball does not get into the philosophy behind the Emerging movement (at least not as far as I’ve gotten so far), but rather explains the fundamental princples behind a gathering of ‘emergent’ people. His focus is on meeting the cultural shift between generations and using that, rather than fighting it. It’s an interesting perspective both on church as we know it, and church as we may very well see it in the future. Time spent on this book: no idea, but probably near a year. It’s been on my shelf waiting for several before that.

As interesting as both of these books are, I don’t find myself with the urge to read often enough. I love to read, but I apparently hate change, and would rather fall into my routine of ‘Star Trek’ and ‘The Pretender’ as down time activities rather than pick up a book. It’s a flaw. I do find myself using down time at work to read through a chapter, and that’s been great. I like books; I like having books around; reading feels like a slow process.

Hurrah! I’ve got the thing to get all my old info in here.

Perhaps posting will resume again.

The computer that was hosting my site went defunct on me, so I’m in the process of moving my stuff.

Stay tuned for details….

In true nerd fashion, I decided it was time to convert one of the old laptops I had to a digital photo frame, and to use Christmas as the catalyst to motivate me. So at Christmas, I gave my parents this thing:

It wasn’t the simplest process ever, but it was fun. I wussed out and just ran Win95 which was already on the old Toshiba, but it gets the job done. I put a couple extra pictures of the process on Flickr.

Life can plod on uneventfully sometimes, can’t it. Bleh. BORING. It’s 12:45 and I’m required to sleep, but my day feels unfilled.

[this is me being awesome]

IBM has launched a new campaign to promote the IDP:

The IDP (or Individual Development Plan, for those non-acronym savvy) is merely a sheet of paper that outlines your personal development goals (like “win an emmy”) and how you plan on doing that (like “make a tv show”). Usually, these only get filled out by managerial request (requirement). But the new campaign makes me feel all blue and fuzzy inside to fill out my IDP!